The article said that a new scientific study, carried out by Angus Ferraro, Ellie Highwood and Andrew Charlton-Perez of Reading University, showed that the most widely discussed geo-engineering method for holding the global temperature down would have disastrous consequences for agriculture. The method is injecting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere; the (unintended) result would be devastating drought in the tropics.

The idea of using sulphate aerosols in the stratosphere to reflect back some incoming sunlight, thus lowering surface temperatures on Earth, has been the leading contender for a geo-engineering solution to runaway heating since the whole subject came out of the closet eight years ago. And then along come “Ferraro et al.” (as the scientists put it) to tell us that the side-effects will be disastrous. Thanks, guys.

So I ended the article by saying: “The sulphur dioxide technique was the cheapest and seemingly the best understood option for holding the temperature down. A great many people were glad that it was there, as a kind of safety net if we really don’t get our act together in time to halt the warming by less intrusive means. Now there’s no safety net.”

Almost immediately I got an email from Andy Parker, now a research fellow in the Kennedy School at Harvard University and previously a climate-change policy adviser for the Royal Society in the United Kingdom. You’ve been suckered by the publicity flacks at Reading University, he said (though in kinder words). They have spun the research findings for maximum shock value. In other words, read the damn thing before you write about it.

Well, actually, I did read it (it’s available online), but the conclusions are couched in the usual science-speak, with a resolute avoidance of anything that might look like interpretation for the general public. I didn’t look long enough at the key graph that undercuts the dire conclusions of the publicists, presumably because I had already been conditioned by them to see something else there.

Drastic consequences would indeed ensue if you tried to geo-engineer a 4 degrees C warmer world all the way back down to the pre-industrial average global temperature by putting sulphate aerosols in the stratosphere. But nobody in their right mind would try to do that.

On the other hand, if you were using sulphates to hold the temperature down to plus 1.8 degrees C, in a world where the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere would otherwise give you plus 4 degrees C, then the effect on tropical rainfall would be small. And that is a far likelier scenario, because we are most unlikely to resort to large-scale geo-engineering until we are right at the threshold (around plus 2 degrees C) of runaway warming.

So the correct conclusion to draw from Ferrero et al. is that geo-engineering with sulphates is still one of the more promising techniques for holding the temperature down, and should be investigated further. As Andy Parker put it, “This does not tell us that we should do geo-engineering, but it does mean that the paper is a long way from being the nail in the coffin that the press release implies.”

And then I got another email, this time from my old friend Amory Lovins, cofounder and chief scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute, who took me to task for assuming that human greenhouse gas emissions “probably will not drop” fast enough to prevent us from going into runaway warning (unless we geo-engineer) later this century.

Not true, he said. “Since the Kyoto conference in 1997, most efforts to hedge climate risks have made four main errors: assuming solutions will be costly rather than (at least mainly) profitable; insisting they be motivated by concerns about climate rather than about security, profit, or economic development; assuming they require a global treaty; and assuming businesses can do little or nothing before carbon is priced.”

“As these errors are gradually realized, climate protection is changing course. It will be led more by countries and companies than by international treaties and organizations, more by the private sector and civil society than by governments, more by leading developing economies than by mature developed ones, and more by efficiency and clean energy’s economic fundamentals than by possible future carbon pricing.”

He pointed out how strongly China is committed to clean energy. Last year renewables, (including hydro) accounted for 43 percent of new generating capacity in China, as the extra coal plants ordered long ago taper sharply down. India is showing signs of moving in the same direction, and there’s even hope that Japan may decide to replace all the nuclear capacity it is shutting down with renewables rather than coal.

So I shouldn’t be so pessimistic, they were both telling me. I believe Andy Parker is right, and I hope Amory Lovins is right too. But just in case Amory is a bit off in the timing of all these turnarounds on greenhouse gas emissions in Asia, I would still like to see a lot of research, including small-scale experiments in the open atmosphere, on the various techniques for geo-engineering.

Comments

13 Comments

Ben Sili

Feb 2, 2014 at 6:10pm

In clear Gwynne's opinion just depends on the proper activist shouting louder. What an unbiased source of information... LOL

Brad Arnold

Feb 2, 2014 at 11:54pm

LENR is about to emerge onto the market. It uses nickel and hydrogen in a nuclear reaction that does not produce radiation, nor radioactive material. It gives hydrogen a fuel density in the neighborhood of ten thousand times that of fossil fuel. It will replace every other form of energy production.

I've got tons of links from NASA to independent lab reports, but I am sick of talking sense to you people...just wait. With clean energy "too cheap to meter" (Forbes.com), we can remove the excess carbon from the air.

BTW, Gwynne, you are an idiot...I've seen you write wrong things again and again, and frankly I wouldn't believe you if you wrote that the sun was rising tomorrow.

Dumb and dumber

Feb 3, 2014 at 10:03am

What a piece of work this guy is.

Real scientists have proven what is being sprayed on us has nothing to do with preventing global warming and in fact has everything to do with destroying the environment. MONSANTO can own the worlds food supply with gmo seeds as it has made heavy metal resistant ones (coincidence? I think not). It does not take a smart man to know that dumping tons of heavy metals into our atmosphere will kill everything eventually. LIke taking a speed stick and applying it to your entire body daily, eventually you poison every organ and die.

pmagn

David Lewis

Feb 3, 2014 at 4:14pm

I suspect Gwynne hasn't considered ocean acidification, which geonengineering can do nothing about. This age of life in the oceans will be gone. Dr Ken Caldeira of Stanford, a pioneer in studying what happens as the CO2 from our tailpipes dissolves in the oceans, says by mid century ALL coral reefs will be on their deathbeds. Basically any organism that needs a calcium shell will find it increasingly difficult to build and maintain such shells as the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere rises.

Steve Tracton

Feb 3, 2014 at 5:51pm

All here seem to miss the most basic aspect of all studies like this. Namely, in this discussion taking model based implications on the effects of injecting sulfur dioxide at face value.No model in existence, or likely to be in the foreseeable future, has the capability to reliably project the specific regional impacts of sulfur dioxide - or for that regional impacts of any climate change scenario. That's certainly true of the IPCC models, and the model used here most certainly is no exception.

The bottom line is there is no way to tell what the actual impacts of geoengineering with sufficient confidence to even think of this as a scientifically rational approach to mitigation the effects of global climate change (aka, global warming). The law of unintended consequences will inevitably prevail.

Chris Lawlis

McRetso

Feb 5, 2014 at 6:23am

To all the chem-trail conspiritards, nobody is going to believe you without some actual evidence. Pictures of contrails and the odd snap of containers of liquid being carried in a plane are not evidence. Calling people who point this out sheeple is also not evidence.

Telling people to "wake up" is pretty much the pot calling the silverware black.

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